The Half Life of Molly Pierce Read Online Free

you need me.” She slips quietly out of the room.
    Clancy hasn’t moved from the window seat.
    “Must have been crazy,” he says.
    “Sure,” I say. “Crazy.”
    “You actually saw him—”
    “Clancy.”
    “Right, sorry.”
    He stands up awkwardly, uncomfortable in his own skin, something I could always relate to. Clancy isn’t in therapy, though. He’s never admitted to anyone that he sometimes might rather be dead.
    “Good night,” I say.
    “Hey, don’t off yourself tonight,” he says, brightening. Depression humor. He shuts the door when he leaves.
    In my dreams I see his face.
    Bloody and white on the pavement. The blood warm and filling his mouth, spilling over and pooling underneath him. The white of his eyeballs.
    I see both their faces; they are interchangeable. The brothers, Lyle and Sayer. Lyle Avery. Dead now.
    What had he said?
    He wanted to see me again.
    My dreams twist his face into a demon, into an angel, into a red mass of unrecognizable flesh. I wake up sweaty and panicked twenty times until finally I get out of bed. It’s five in the morning and I go downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee.
    It’s Wednesday. I get my backpack from the living room. Someone brought it in for me last night. I have homework and I work on it at the kitchen table until my mom comes down and offers breakfast. Scrambled eggs? Toast? I’m not hungry, but I eat whatever she puts in front of me because it’s easier than arguing. My brother stumbles down around six; and Hazel, dressed and bright and cheerful, bounces into the kitchen at seven thirty. And if I thought my parents might give me the option to stay home, they don’t. My mother kisses my cheek and my dad gives me one of his long, meaningful shoulder squeezes and then they practically herd us outside.
    I drop Hazel off at middle school and then Clancy and I make our way to the high school. We never talk in the mornings. He’s brought coffee in a travel mug, but he gives it to me. This is his way of making sure I’m okay. Have some coffee; don’t be sad. He’d never be able to actually say it.
    Erie and Luka are by my locker, waiting. They don’t know about the accident, but they know I left school early yesterday and they want an explanation. Erie is indignant and offended I didn’t ask her to bail with me.
    “Didn’t return any of my text messages,” Erie says, in lieu of hello . I realize I haven’t looked at my phone for a long time. I didn’t even get it out of my backpack this morning. I fish around for it now and withdraw it triumphantly: dead. I show it to her.
    “Dead,” I say, shrugging.
    “And your charger is, what, lost?” she insists. Erie is holding her phone and showing it to me like this is what a phone is supposed to look like, Molly. Fully charged.
    “Maybe lost,” I say. I haven’t actually seen it in a while.
    “You’re impossible,” she says.
    “You missed a test,” Luka says.
    “What subject?” I ask. But I don’t really care. I shove past him to get to my locker and open it quickly, withdrawing unneeded books from my bag and stacking them inside.
    “Health,” he says.
    “Tragic,” I say. Health isn’t a class; it’s a subset of gym. Nobody’s ever failed gym.
    “It was pretty important,” he persists. He has a book in his hands; he uses it to gesture and it slips out of his fingers and lands on Erie’s toe. It’s a hardcover; her reaction is elaborate and loud.
    “I don’t care about the fucking test, Luka,” I moan, slamming my locker shut and resting my head for a moment against its metal surface.
    “Well, you shouldn’t be wearing sandals in October,” Luka is saying. He straightens up and puts the book into his backpack. Erie holds one foot off the ground and whimpers.
    “They’re the only shoes I have that go with this shirt,” she says, pouting.
    “Do they really go with that shirt, though?” Luka asks.
    “How would you even know what goes with this shirt?” Erie shoots